The UK’s most embarrassing email disasters revealed

We’ve all sent an email which has resulted in instant regret and a flood of embarrassment when the realisation of our mistake hits. Whether it’s a private email to our boss instead of our partner or a joke made in poor taste, Brits seem to have countless stories when it comes to workplace email disasters.

Following a survey of 2,000 UK workers, we were inundated with some of the worst email mishaps and mistakes. Here is a selection of the funniest and most cringe-worthy submissions we received.

Wrong recipient

“I told a student that she had failed, but forgetting to delete the rest of the class from the mailing list before sending”

“I went to reply to an email, criticising one of the managers, except I pressed ‘reply all’ and sent it to 32 people. It was only when someone messaged me that I realised the mistake… The manager never said anything and I just pretended it didn’t happen”

“I wrote an extremely explicit rant about female staff “making a mess” in the toilets and, instead of sending it to the person, I sent it to a client”

“I sent an email to my department about a member of staff’s leaving present, stupidly stating “give a little, if for no other reason than you are glad to see her go” being sent to all staff including the one leaving”

“I called a customer a d***head in an email which was meant for a work colleague. Luckily he found it funny”

“An email was sent to 130 people saying “meet me tonight in the usual place” – the sender had 90 replies asking where the usual place was!”

Spelling blunders

“I sent a customer an email saying we were out of stock of size large shirts, but embarrassingly I forgot to include the ‘r’ in shirts”

“I accidentally wrote ‘pubic’ in an email instead of ‘public’”

“The funniest email was in response to an internal job application. I think one of HR’s 3 year old children typed it. I’ve never forgotten it and this is the exact response: ‘Thank U for your application what we got. If U do not here from us in 7 days U R not successful.’”

“A colleague signed off an email, ‘Please ‘returd’ instead of ‘return’. I forget the main content of the email, but that part stuck in everyone’s minds who was cc’d in!”

“Someone writing ‘butthole’ instead of ‘buttonhole’ in the sentence, ‘increase the buttonhole.’”

To avoid workplace embarrassment, remember to spell check your emails and always make sure they’re being sent to the right person before clicking the send button.